ITIL v3 - All Comments

re: Is it a process or a system?

Kurt Richardson — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:38:40 GMT

Bravo. Excellent post.

Many of those blogs you mention seem stuck in the BPR movement of the 1990s, fixated on discrete and "countable" process, often confusing criterion for outcome.

While process has certain strong points, there are serious methodological shortcomings in the process approach, as evidenced by the high-failure rate of process-based initiatives.

A more holistic systems approach, as taken by the new ITIL, should be adopted for business analysis, begeting patterns and frameworks, rather than the mechanistic approaches of the 1990s.

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Re: IT Services, Business Services, Services

jacek.pikul@hp.com — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:05:00 GMT

I fully agree this needs to be sorted out. I faced the same questions when translating V3 glossary into Polish. To add to your comments: business service (in its first meaning, let's skip the other for the moment) is supposed to be a subcategory of an IT Service, which is distinguished by the fact that it directly supports customer's business processes. The other subcategory of IT service, i.e. Infrastructure Service, is only used internally by IT Service Provider: "An IT Service that is not directly used by the Business, but is required by the IT Service Provider so they can provide other IT Services. For example Directory Services, naming services, or communication services." It seems that the term Infrastructure Service does not fulfill the criteria of being an IT Service, because it's not provided to Customers! To make it even more complicated, ITIL V3 also introduces the concept of core and supporting services. Digging into these terms, they resemble business and infrastructure services respectively. Unless we accept the situation that an infrastructure service may pose a core service, but that would be against their definitions. Regards, JP

Re: ITIL V3 and Jeroen Bronkhorst - a quick introduction

Jeroen Bronkhorst — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:07:00 GMT

Hello Vincent, I am not exactly sure what you are looking for, could you please elaborate a little. In addition I would like to better understand the context for your question. If other people have any suggestions to this topic, then feel free to jump in as well. Thanks in advance. Best Regards, Jeroen Bronkhorst

Re: ITIL V3 and Jeroen Bronkhorst - a quick introduction

vin1cent — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:21:00 GMT

Hello Jeroen, Could you comment on Service Catalogue Management? What are the form(s) of service catalogue we can see today?

Re: Differentation of Change Types

quinten.ockers@dp-itsolutions.... — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:48:00 GMT

Hello Jeroen, Within a large organisation I do see the necessity to standardise the change activities, when it comes to processes and procedures. During the implementation of the internal process globally however depending on the type of change typical issues re-occurred again and again for different services. I.e. A change on an (in-house) developed application / software needs another set of work orders and approval stakeholders as a change on infrastructure. Furthermore the business requires a far more lean procedure for application changes as for hardware changes. Aspects such as operational acceptance tests are not in scope for minor application changes, it does for hardware. Furthermore the order life-cycle (budget approval) of hardware is not in scope of infrastructure changes; however it does on software changes. Within our continuous improvement program we are now twisting whether we should establish one process with extra may-be procedures for specific types are to establish several change process models with mandatory procedures. This is way I raised the question whether there are other best practises, which deal with similar issues. PS. Sorry for the late response, unfortunately I was on a business trip last week. Best regards, Quinten P. Ockers

Re: ITIL V3 and Jeroen Bronkhorst - a quick

Jeroen Bronkhorst — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:36:00 GMT

Quinten, understood. As each IT organization is managing a unique set of (service) assets, the change activities defined at a work instruction level (sidenote: I use the ISO9001 chapter 4 definitions here) will always be specific and customized to fit your unique environment. When it comes to processes and procedures however, my recommendation is to standardize and keep them generically applicable as much as possible. This reduces complexity and keeps maintenance of your process documentation at an acceptable level/effort/cost. Could you please elaborate a little on why the change procedures in your organization need to be different per technology type? Best regards, Jeroen Bronkhorst.

Re: Is ITIL V3 (more) complex?

Jeroen Bronkhorst — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:15:00 GMT

The ITIL V3 core books describe basic concepts and terminology. Complementary guidance is now being developed to add more depth and/or apply the basic concepts in a particular situation/industry. One of the complementary products being developed is the ITIL Live Portal that will provide flow models at multiple levels of detail. This is referenced from "the official introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle" book. I do not (yet) know when this portal will be officially made available. Hope this helps. Regards, Jeroen Bronkhorst

Re: Differentiaton of Changes Types

quinten.ockers@dp-itsolutions.... — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:19:00 GMT

Hello Jereon, Within our process we classify our changes in the categories pre-authorized; minor; significant and major. For those categories we established a 10-criterien questionnaire along which the change category can be indicated by the requestor. My question remains, because although the procedures for each change type (application; infrastructure, housing, etc.) are the same, the procedure steps for i.e. an application significant change differ with those of an infrastructure significant change. My Question is still whether there are other best-practices, where such a differentiation has been made or whether this is a unique issue within our own IT Services organisation. Especially the procedure steps are different when a 3rd-party is involved. met vriendelijke groeten. Quinten P. Ockers

Re: Is ITIL V3 (more) complex?

dana.stoll — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:31:00 GMT

In my humble opinion, when we are discussing the complexity of frameworks, there is already something going terribly wrong. Either whatever strategy we follow is an enabler, or it isn't. If the perceived complexity is high, then it's not an enabler, whether we tend to attribute it to resistance to change or not. In the end, lack of time may be a resistance to change as well which you could attribute to culture, however anchored in society on a wider scale than personal obstinacy. Whatever framework considered needs to be transformed to a method, before we can expect considerable performance. This organizational gap has to be filled, and filled successfully, before we can expect performance. If that job takes a long time, performance will take a long time. Regards Dana

Re: Is ITIL V3 (more) complex?

vin1cent — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:51:00 GMT

I think V3 is more "complex" not because of the number of pages but the materials available now are not enough to elaborate the new processes. In ITIL v2 books, the flowcharts are generaaly available for the processes. But in V3, there are no flow chart for some new processes, e.g. Portfolio Management, Catalogue Management, Request fulfillment, Access Management, etc. Please let me know if you know the availability of these flowcharts.

Re: ITIL V3 and Jeroen Bronkhorst - a quick

Jeroen Bronkhorst — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:09:00 GMT

Hello Quinten. The challenge that I see with your change types is that it sustains organizational silo's. It is best practice to use change types like major changes, emergency changes, pre-authorized changes, etc. For more guidance, I'd recommend that you take a look at the change management process described within the ITIL V3 Service Transition book. I hope this answers your question. Best regards, Jeroen Bronkhorst.

Differentiation of Change Types in ITIL3

quinten.ockers@dp-itsolutions.... — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:10:00 GMT

Dear Jeroen, At the moment we have integrated Production Change Management along our internal processes based on ITIL V.2. In this processes we had to make a differences between following change types: - Application Changes - Infrastructure Changes - Housing-Infrastructure Changes - Network Changes - Client and APS Changes - Core Desktop Changes - Operational documentation and licenses changes This diversification was mainly done because the change procedure models were different for each type of change. My Question is whether there are other best-practices, where such a differentiation has been made or whether this is a unique issue within our own IT Services organisation. Best regards. Quinten P. Ockers

Re: The ITILV3 Configuration Management Syst

Jeroen Bronkhorst — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:19:00 GMT

Yes, sure. A CMS can be implemented with many different technologies and products, although I have a (slight) preference for HP software of course ;-). There might be a challenge with the components that you mentioned in how to make it look at the presentation layer as if the CMS is one logical database. In other words, how is the integrated federated CMDB being addressed. Hope this helps. Regards, Jeroen Bronkhorst

Re: The ITILV3 Configuration Management Syst

vin1cent — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 04:24:00 GMT

Thank you for sharing near mid night. Do you think a CMS could consists of: a) An in-house developed Domino application containing Service Assets and their attributes and relationship b) A Microsoft SMS database collecting network PC asset information for comparison with the information contained in the Domino application. c) A set of visio files showing network architecture diagrams d) A set of visio files showing the infrastructure diagram e) A set of application data diagrams Thanks & Best Regards